Robert Byrd

Robert Byrd (20 November 1917-28 June 2010) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-WV 6) from 3 January 1953 to 3 January 1959 (succeeding E.H. Hedrick and preceding John M. Slack Jr.) and a US Senator from 3 January 1959 to 28 June 2010 (succeeding Chapman Revercomb and preceding Carte Goodwin).

Biography
Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. was born in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina in 1917, and his mother died during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. According to his wife's wishes, Byrd's father dispersed their children among her family, and Cornelius was adopted by his aunt and uncle in southern West Virginia, where he was raised as "Robert Byrd". In the early 1940s, he created a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia, and he was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops of the local Klan unit. Byrd also served in the House of Delegates from 1947 to 1950 and in the State Senate from 1951 to 1952 as a Democrat. However, during his run for the US House of Representatives in 1952, he lost interest in the Klan, as he had only joined it due to his feeling of excitement and his anti-communism. He represented a district which included Charleston and his hometown of Sophia, and he went on to be elected to the US Senate in 1958. Byrd was very popular in his state, becoming the longest-serving US Senator in history. He steered a great deal of federal spending towards projects in West Virginia, filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and supported the Vietnam War, but he later renounced racism and segregation and opposed the Iraq War. He died in 2010 at the age of 92.